learning to love
by hheartaches
Summary: "You got someone pregnant," Roy says, the poison of disbelief seeping through every syllable, every flick of his tongue. The boy gulps again, fighting down nausea. "Yes, sir." Mentions of abuse, rape, mental illness. Parental royed.Title subject to change.


**God Its been forever so i'm rewriting this story. I'm about to rewrite what I had of chapter two!**

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There was a little knock on the door. It was cute, invisible almost. Breda could've sworn it was ghost. He jumped out of his seat and onto the table like it was one—or maybe like Hayate had "unexpectedly" been brought into the office that day. Fuery dropped his radio at the sudden movement and cursed. Havoc looked around the room to see who would be the least laziest and open the door. First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye could never _truly_ report how many rounds of fire she wasted on the team.

"What? I opened it last, its y'all' turn."

Her glare hardened and she put her gun back into its holster. Her eyes memorize the page numbers and clauses as to not be slowed down because these _men couldn't get up to answer the—_

"Hello!"

There was a boy. It was a boy.

Granted, there was always a boy in headquarter, there was never _not_ a boy in Eastern Headquarters. _'This has gotta be a cousin,'_ she thought to herself. _'A distant relative or maybe an alchemic fluke.'_

"I'm Jeremiah! I'm looking for my dad! Have you seen him?"

Riza Hawkeye sighed at the excited tone of little boy. A gentle smile appeared on her face. If she were honest, she wasn't too fond of children—she just knew how to not be a dick to them. She rested her hands on her knees as she bent down to eye-level with the toddler. The Lieutenant's voice turned softer than she thought it would.

"You're looking for your daddy?" she asked.

The office soldiers desperately held back their snickers before promptly shutting up at the sound of a safety.

The boy, as oblivious as boys should be, smiled bright in the dimly lit doorway. "Yeah! His name is—"

Jeremiah rummaged through the tiny pockets of his tiny green cargo pants on his tiny body before pulling out a small piece of paper. He unraveled it with his greasy macaroni-stained hands. His alarmingly large eyes squinted at the paper before he turned up to the woman.

"Edward Elric!"

Hawkeye despite herself stopped breathing. Havoc's lungs couldn't have been happier to.

* * *

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

Edward Elric knew it was a rhetorical question, so he didn't answer. He couldn't even try to get his normal, fiery _I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I wanna do_ glare on his face. His eyes were blank, shoulders slumped, and bags settled themselves right above his cheekbones.

The younger alchemist gulped. He looked sick and Roy wanted to care, he wanted to care so _badly_ , but there was a child— _another child_ with Ed's eyes and hair—drooling on the couch.

"You're sixteen."

"I am."

Edward's sarcastic tone was still there at least, but there was no venom in his teeth. The Fullmetal Alchemist had a loud bark and an equally deadly bite. But Edward Elric, the boy that sat in his office—the boy whose favorite pastime was using his nerves as a trampoline—was nowhere to be found. Ed acted as though there was no child claiming to be his napping on the office couch. It felt like God sent him this nightmare as a final message. _Give him the talk! Give it to him_ _ **right**_ _! Not a half-assed one like last time!_

"Fullmetal."

A sudden shock of rage went through him. It disappeared before he had time to lash out. The Colonel's voice was always close to automail on a chalkboard to him—especially when he couldn't call him _by his name_. Ed could faintly hear Alphonse voice chatting up with the team outside the door. He figured if he could just _pretend_ there wasn't a child that looked frighteningly similar to him in the room, then it'd all go away and he'd go back to searching for the philosopher's stone.

"Sir," Ed ground out.

"You got someone pregnant," Roy stated. He sounded like he was begging to be wrong.

The Fullmetal Alchemist's heart, as big as it was, dropped straight past his stomach and settled at his feet. The boy gulps down a ball of nausea. "Yes, sir."

The Colonel dragged an irritated hand down his face—his headache evolving into a migraine. He reached over to the phone and pushed button after button. It was a sequence Edward knew, but he didn't know from what. But Edward was nosy; he sat down in the chair closest to

"Get over here," Mustang says simply. There's a long beat, at least a minute worth of Edward beating heart. The voice on the other line was faint, but sounded excited? The Colonel's fingers—gloveless, thank God—snapped. "It's urgent!" he souted into the phone before promptly hanging up.

The younger alchemist didn't know how much time passed after that. After a while, he settled for closing his eyes. Mustang's glare wasn't going to do anything for his anxiety anyway.

The door opened and closed swiftly. Ed knew the voice well, but couldn't find a word describe how it made him feel.

"What's wrong?" Hughes asked. He turned to Edward with a sly smile. "Hi, Ed." The Lieutenant Colonel took two strides and a side glance towards the toddler huddled on the couch. "Hi, Little Ed."

Maes Hughes, head of the Investigations department, looked between Edward and "Little Ed" once, then twice, then a third time while making an incredulous sound the whole time. He offered a diabolical smile before quickly shoving his hand inside his jacket and pulling out a camera.

"Please don't," Mustang whined.

Hughes turned the flash off before he started taking pictures. One buy one, he placed each Polaroid in front of Edward as he took them. Jeremiah barely stirs at the impromptu photo shoot.

"Ed, I didn't know you had an even younger brother!"

The young alchemist huffed. "Because I don't."

The camera shuttered one last time—the photo dropped to the floor. Maes shook his head and continued taking photos, a little less enthusiastic than before.

"Ah, a cousin then?" An uncle? A nephew?

"Nah," Edward answered simply.

Maes Hughes freezes and dropped the camera all together—fear and disbelief shaking him. "S-So, he's your-your—"

"Son," the _boy_ concluded. "He's my son, yeah."

In the Lieutenant Colonel's head, he promptly fainted at the confirmation. Unfortunately, in real life he'd stopped breathing (but only for a minute or two). When he finally exhaled, he turned to his best friend who'd been patiently waiting for him.

"Punch me," he said. "Punch me and I'll wake up."

The Fullmetal Alchemist banged his head against the back of the chair. "Tell me about it," he joked.

"This is serious, Fullmetal," Roy ground out.

Hughes rushed up to the desk and slammed his hands onto it. "No! No it is _not_. This is a prank, a very _wrong_ prank."

"Hm, okay," the boy said nonchalantly. He looked at the photos in front of him and turned around to the toddler on the couch. He quickly turned around and looked into a dirty corner instead. _'He doesn't look too much like her. I guess that's good.'_

Maes sat down on the couch; glasses perched on his head, head in his hands and the toddler's head next to his thigh. Minutes of groaning and sighing passed before he finally looked at the boy again.

"He doesn't look that much like you," he said squinting at the baby.

Mustang leaned his face against his fist. "Put your glasses on, Hughes."

"Oh yeah." He pushed his glasses down onto his face and up his nose. He looked at the boy and cursed. "Holy shit," he muttered. "How?"

"How? You have a child you know how," Ed joked. He really didn't want to get into it with who the mother was or where she might be or why she sent her son to Eastern Headquarters by himself in broad daylight. Being reminded of exactly how this _child_ came to be was something Edward really didn't feel like doing. They could respect that, couldn't they?

"Of course I know _how_. It's just—Ed you're fifteen."

Blonde eyebrows furrowed in irritation. "I'm almost seventeen, damn you," Ed snarled.

"And you just magically have a three-year-old?"

The alchemist blinked dumbly and sighed before he leaned his head back and groaning. "Yeah, I guess so."

Maes, furious, turned to the Colonel. "And you-you _knew about this?_ " His anger was…understandable and yet the young alchemist found himself confused and nauseous. "You encouraged this didn't you? God, I knew you were bad influence on him—"

He put his hands in front of the bespectacled man's face to catch his attention. "Wait— _wait_ , okay. _I_ just found out today. He knew probably fifteen minutes before I did! I don't even know the kid's _name_ , alright?"

A soft grumble startled the three soldiers from their argument. They all turned to the toddler resting on the couch—a toddler who was now sitting upright, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"What was that?" Ed asked.

"My name is Jeremiah!" the boy shouted.

His eyes spoke loudly of gold.

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 **Review, follow, favorite, do what you do but don't be silent! Tell me what you think! I really feel like deleting this to be honest; i feel like super disinterested in it now, but I thought I'd give it a shot.**


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